WITH BILLIONS OF PESOS ROUTINELY POCKETED BY CORRUPT POLITICIANS, THE PHILIPPINES COULD NOT EVEN GIVE DECENT SUPPORT TO A FEW SOLDIERS ASSIGNED IN HARMS WAY. A GAME OF SHARK AND MINNOW. THIS IS AS MUCH ABOUT OUR FAR-FLUNG ISLAND POSSESSIONS AS IT IS A TALE OF HEROISM OF A FEW SOLDIERS. JEFF HIMMELMAN wrote in the New York Times: In a remote corner of the South China Sea, 105 nautical miles from the Philippines, lies a submerged reef the Filipinos call Ayungin. In most ways it resembles the hundreds of other reefs, islands, rock clusters and cays that collectively are called the Spratly Islands. But Ayungin is different. In the reef’s shallows there sits a forsaken ship, manned by eight Filipino troops whose job is to keep China in check. For a moment we could see them as they really were, these marines: men who were serving their country in an extreme and unrelenting and even somewhat humiliating situation and trying bravely to make the best of it. The men depend on fish as their main means of physical survival. They were all undernourished and losing weight, even though eating and meal prep were the main activities on board, after fishing. Asked what meal he missed most from the mainland, Yanto said, “Vegetables,” without hesitation. “That’s more important than meat or any other kind of dish.” The motto of the boat, spray-painted on the wall near the kitchen, was “Kumain ang gustong mabuhay” — basically: “If you want to live, eat.” The Chinese presence at Ayungin had spooked the Philippine Navy out of undertaking its regular run to resupply the troops there, but the Chinese were still letting some fishing boats through. China and the Philippines engaged in a standoff at Scarborough Shoal, after a Philippine warship attempted to expel Chinese fishing boats from the area, which they claimed had been harvesting endangered species within the Philippine EEZ. In June of last year, the United States helped broker an agreement for both China’s and the Philippines’s ships to leave Scarborough Shoal peacefully, but China never left. They eventually blocked access to the shoal and filled in a nest of boats around it to ward off foreign fishermen. Although the shoal lies well to the north of the Spratlys, it is in many ways Ayungin’s direct precedent. “Since [the standoff], we have begun to take measures to seal and control the areas around the Huangyan Island,” Maj. Gen. Zhang Zhaozhong, of China’s People’s Liberation Army, said in a television interview in May, using the Chinese term for Scarborough. (That there are three different names for the same set of uninhabitable rocks tells you much of what you need to know about the region.) He described a “cabbage strategy,” which entails surrounding a contested area with so many boats — fishermen, fishing administration ships, marine surveillance ships, navy warships — that “the island is thus wrapped layer by layer like a cabbage.” There can be no question that the cabbage strategy is in effect now at Ayungin and has been at least since May. General Zhang, in his interview several months ago, listed Ren’ai Shoal (the Chinese name for Ayungin) in the P.L.A.’s “series of achievements” in the South China Sea. He had already put it in the win column, even though eight Filipino marines still live there. He also seemed to take some pleasure in the strategy. Of taking territory from the Philippines, he said: “We should do more such things in the future. For those small islands, only a few troopers are able to station on each of them, but there is no food or even drinking water there. If we carry out the cabbage strategy, you will not be able to send food and drinking water onto the islands. Without the supply for one or two weeks, the troopers stationed there will leave the islands on their own. Once they have left, they will never be able to come back.” Like Ayungin, Lawak serves as a strategic gateway to the rich oil and gas reserves of the Reed Bank. In some ways, the guys on Lawak were even more isolated than Loresto and Yanto and the others on Ayungin. They were not allowed any use of the satellite phones whatsoever, not even for calls from loved ones. Over the course of a few hours, Retoriano referred to the island as “paradise” several times — which it was, if you focused on its physical beauty and didn’t think of how hard it would be to actually live there. And in truth these guys had it better than some of the other detachments — Kota, Parola, Likas, Rizal Reef, Patag — because at least they had ground to live and sleep on. The settlements on Rizal Reef, Patag and Panata are mostly crude stilted structures over shallow water or small sandbars, with very little room to maneuver and fishing as the sole activity and consolation. According to Mayor Eugenio) Bito-onon, the troops on Rizal Reef used to tie themselves to empty oil drums when there was particularly bad weather at night, so that if a high sea or an errant piece of ocean debris wiped out the stilts, they’d at least be able to float. Why the fuss over “Dangerous Ground”? Natural resources are a big piece of it. According to current U.S. estimates, the seabed beneath the Spratlys may hold up to 5.4 billion barrels of oil and 55.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. On top of which, about half of the world’s merchant fleet tonnage and nearly one third of its crude oil pass through these waters each year. They also contain some of the richest fisheries in the world. Please read the full story at nytimes/newsgraphics/2013/10/27/south-china-sea/?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=MG_AGO_20131025
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 14:32:58 +0000
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